Saturday, May 6, 2017

Lison #3

Another early morning wake up as the body clock slowly adjusts, which is good as I get to go for a walk in the early morning light before the hordes swarm the streets. I walked around Baxia with it's magnificent edifices and swanky shops, down to the bottom of the Santa Justa elevator, back up to Sao Roche. Beautiful light after rain.

We set off early to catch the tram to Belem. Tram was a squeezy experience filled with tourists and a few hapless locals. There are a number of museums located within the Jeronimos Monastery there.  The archaeological museum had some beautiful roman marble statues dug from what was once a wealthy Romans holiday Villa, and a great treasury. The big event at the monastery though is the cloyster of the monastery itself. Never seen anything quite like that before, such an extraordinary profusion of wonderfully carved detail that the eye doesn't know where to look. Gaudi may well have drawn some inspiration from it.

After marvelling at the choir and the refectory we visited the maritime museum, and it's temporary Viking exhibit. Interesting but maybe our wonder nerves had become overloaded.
Got home via another hyper crowded tram, and another visit to the Beer Museum, after which we needed to sit in a darkened room for a while to settle down.
Once we had recovered we visited the top of the Santa Justa elevator tower, enjoyed it's splendid views but not so much the vertiginous spiral staircase, caught the lift down, walked to the waterfront in time to see the QE2 slide massively past, found a nice  restaurant for dinner, then stumbled home via the supermarket. I think Lisbon is right up there in my best European capital rankings.

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